


Storms O'er the Graveyard

by MidnightNereid



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, M/M, so you want fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-30
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-12-30 22:01:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1023893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MidnightNereid/pseuds/MidnightNereid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason and Nico, one hundred scenarios, each based on a word. A variety of moods, a variety of scenes, a variety of genres, and a variety of characters (but mostly if not always Jason/Nico centric, bromance or romance.) AU, Non-Linear, Snapshots, etc etc.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Set One

**1.** **Asylum**  
 _place of refuge or safety_

"Did you really have to come here?"

The question was spoken out of real curiosity, not out of any sort of resentment. Even though there was a heap of bones and too-pale skin that smelled like vomit stretched out on Jason's couch in New Rome. Even though Jason had to wash seventy-five percent of that vomit off of his expensive Oxford shirt, which he had freaking bought  _that morning_ just so he can attend Percy Jackson's graduation ceremony without Piper giving him that disappointed-girlfriend look for not going in with style. Even if his nice, polished wooden floor was at threat for more vomit.

Nico, one arm shielding his eyes from the dim light of the living room--dimmed for his benefit, mostly, because the first thing he'd rasped out after he had stumbled through the door and finished emptying his lunch on Jason's shirt front was a rough "It's too bright"--made a grunting noise in return. After a pause. A pause which the son of Jupiter decided to decipher as hurt. Lack of contact with his friends over the years had turned the Hades boy defensive. He believed so deeply that he wasn't wanted anywhere that he automatically assumed that if he heard something even slightly suggestive of that conclusion. Which, by the way, wouldn't do. Jason stopped drying his hands and walked over, still bare-chested and wearing nothing but his trousers, and bent over the kid.

The shade must have gone nicely on those sensitive eyes, because Nico actually lifted his arm to peek out at him after only two solid minutes. His glare was almost sulky. "I didn't think I could make it to camp," he said eventually, then coughed. The sound was wet. Another thing to add to the growing list of symptoms, the heading of which was 'self-starvation.' Piper had gone to fetch the healer down the street, who slept like a stone and wouldn't answer to indirect calls unless Jupiter was personally making it. _  
_

"I didn't mean it like that," Jason said, sitting down next to him. Near his legs, of course. In case Nico barfed again--vomit can't travel this far in a horizontal position, right?

Nico grunted again, retreating back under his arm at the loss of shade. He sounded a little dubious, but less than before. Jason shrugged inwardly. For right now, that was probably the best he could ask for. He leaned against the couch and closed his eyes. The silence was sleepy and peaceful, mainly because Nico probably didn't have the energy to be awkward anymore.

Eventually Jason broke it. "Where did you head here from?"

Another pause. Then, softly, "Connecticut."

 _Now_  the awkward was evident, because Jason was baffled and Nico clearly wielded the aura of  _I don't want to talk about it, goddamnit._

But eventually he had to ask. "Camp Half-Blood's closer, isn't it?"

"Here's safer," the sixteen-year-old boy said curtly. They let it drop after that.

 **2\. Collate  
** _arrange in order_

Nico stared at the seven things in front of him. He then looked to Annabeth, sitting across from him at the table, a wicked grin on her face. She didn't even try to hide it, he thought. She did always love to beat the crap out of people when it came to games of intelligence. And this was one of them.

"This looks familiar," Jason said thoughtfully from next to him, the dude way too close to be comfortable. His thigh was pressed against Nico's, by Zeus, and he either didn't notice or didn't care. But there was no space left for Nico to scoot away. Not with Hazel squishing him on the other side.  _Her_ obliviousness was a lot less innocent, and he felt justified shooting her a glare. His sister studiously ignored him. Nico was distracted again, with gritted teeth, as Jason moved and leaned forward, his blue eyes squinted at the seven objects. "This is a riddle, isn't it? I've heard of it somewhere. I don't remember where, but..."

"It's a new toy from the Hecate cabin," Annabeth agreed, crossing her legs. She smiled wider. "I asked the new counselor to make it for me. If you arrange them in the wrong order, they'll do something funny."

"Something  _really_ funny," Percy grumbled from next to her. Nico glanced at him. Bit his lip, because there was something extremely funny about seeing the son of the Sea God in lobster form and hearing him with a high-pitched, bubble-ish voice. Hazel trembled from contained laughter, and Jason grinned--half in sympathy.

"It's temporary," Annabeth said flippantly, giving the lobster's shell a pat. "You'll be okay."

"Yeah. Being a shellfish totally is a cool experience," it said, sarcasm dripping from each word. "Can't wait to be put into the pot."

"That's one way to make you actually hot, at least!" shouted Leo from somewhere upstairs. He was still too busy tussling with Percy's broken TV to come down and join them, but he wasn't going to be left out of anything.

"Anyway," Annabeth said quickly before Percy can say something even  _more_ sarcastic and maybe burn a hole through the ground with its acidity. Her stormy gray eyes were bright as she, too, leaned forward and stared straight at Jason. "Would the esteemed Praetor of First Legion like a try?"

Lightning--actual lightning--crackled in the air. Jason took the piece of paper with the written riddle on it and began to think.

Nico looked to Hazel. Together, they stood up and migrated to the kitchen. They would find something to keep themselves busy with until Jason either solved it or get turned into a baby chicken.

 **3\. Dolt  
** _stupid person_

The word smacked Nico like a physical blow across the face. He leaned away, stunned and a little hurt. But Jason didn't seem to notice how his sudden yelling and his fury had affected the smaller boy. All he saw was that there was blood on the black shirt and blood on the jacket and blood on Nico's face. "What did you  _do,_ moron?" he demanded sharply, grabbing Nico by his thin wrist and dragging him indoors.

The saferoom was small and dim. It was hard to see, hard to breathe. Nico suspected his lightheadedness wasn't because of it, though. Already rough fingers were flying over him, spidered under his shirt, checking for injuries. He swallowed. "It's not mine," he insisted. Which was true. It wasn't. And with the words, he gained back what he had lost in wits. He let the examination continue, because he wasn't sure if he wanted it to stop--no, don't think like that. Focus. "What's wrong with  _you_? What happened?"

Jason said nothing. He leaned back against the wall of the warehouse storeroom, closing his eyes and taking in a shaky breath. He looked  _worse_  off than Nico, his blond hair matted with blood, a giant bruise on his face, a bandaged arm.

A chill ran down Nico's spine then. Suddenly he knew, with the same certainty he knew about Bianca long ago, then all of the demigods who had fought on the Olympians' side in the Second Titan War--that same dreadful certainty that told him someone he knew was dead.

Jason slid down, buried his face in his hands, and began to shake. Nico went to his knees in front of him and stayed there, robbed of words once again.

Gaea had won, and Piper was dead.

 **4\. Frugal  
** _economical; not wasting anything_

The apartment was small. One bathroom, one main bedroom, one study, one living room that was also the kitchen. But it was very clean, which Nico thought was kind of strange. He knew Jason had ADHD, and he had never struck Nico as a neat freak. Percy certainly left his boxers lying in unpleasant places that one time Nico had to actually try to kick his door down to wake him up in time before the rest of the Greek fire--Hermes and Hephaestus cabin and  _bloody freaking Leo_  decided to join forces in an apocalyptic prank...but then again, nothing about Jason  _didn't_ surprise him.

He glanced at the son of Jupiter now, watched him as he shed his overcoat and his scarf. Where he had some hope in organization, Nico thought, he sure didn't have any in fashion. What kind of twenty-year-old man wore a scarf with Hello Kitties on it? If it had been a quest and it had been desperate, Nico might generously understand, but he heard Percy didn't even like wearing the man-purse back on his amnesiac quest with Hazel.

Nico crossed his arms, hugging the aviator jacket closer to his chest incidentally. "Only one bed?" he asked. "Or do I sleep in the study?"

"We can share," Jason replied, glancing at him. It was only then that Nico realized he wasn't going to stop at just his overcoat and the horrible scarf. His cheeks pinked.

But he smiled.

 **5\. Instigate  
** _to start; provoke_

Gaea was terrifying. The giants were terrifying. Annabeth as she pinned him with the Athenian Child's Look when he accidentally spilled coffee on her homework was petrifying-worthy.

But there was nothing so  _scary_ as standing naked before the twenty-foot-tall Hades on his throne made of bones, with his staff in one hand and his Helm of Darkness on his head, and have those dark, horrible eyes boring holes into Jason's head. Especially when Hades opened his mouth and said in a deadly, quiet, snake-like whisper that was somehow so overflowing with fury that it would have made Luke Castellan's years-long anti-Olympian campagain a few years back look like a child's tantrum: " _You involve yourself with my son._ "

To be fair, Jason wanted to say, the cursed son of Hades started it. A kiss. And they were both drunk to hell and back with New Year's Eve alcohol. And nobody in that room bothered to  _stop_ them, not even Piper--was this her revenge for that break-up, because if it was then it was worthy of Nemesis.

Instead he swallowed, tried not to shiver in the deathly chill, and began to carefully explain to Hades in polite, self-saving terms that it was not a one-night stand and he was going to be the responsible, dutiful boyfriend Nico never thought he could have but wanted and needed.

 **6\. Assuage  
** _to calm_

"Go away," hissed the figure in the dark.

Jason couldn't see him even with the light of the campfire he was sitting near, but he recognized the voice and knew he had come to the right place. He shouldered the heavy backpack on his shoulder and took the step closer. Immediately, there were shuffling noises and now the voice was almost,  _almost_ , a sob. " _Go away, Jason._ "

For a moment, the sound of his name almost physically willed Jason away. But he more strongly reacted with the raw desperation and hurt in the words than he did with the speaker's mood. Slowly he forged on, until he was close enough to see the outline of the pale face, though the shadows, once again, impeded his sight. He dumped his backpack as soon as he came near enough to the fire and then pulled the parka off his shoulder--the one he'd carried up here for this purpose. It was black, not gray or silver (he heard what happened to Bianca di Angelo) and inched just a little closer. Then he knelt, and waited.

Nico did not move, either away or forward. So he advanced. He advanced until he was within arm's reach of him, and then Jason threw the parka over his head.

There was a soft "oof" as the heavy material seemed to crush the boy beneath it. For a moment, Jason worried-- _had_ the material been too heavy? But it was a ridiculous concern, because he was pretty sure if Nico can go through Tartarus and live with his sanity still functioning, a coat wasn't going to kill him. This was proven true when a thin arm brushed it aside. Dark eyes glared. "What was that for?" Nico growled at him. Then, "I told you to go away."

"I'm not going away," Jason answered quietly, shifting to a cross-legged seat with his back to the fire. He tilted his head at Nico. "Can't raid the kitchen with all those harpies patrolling, but I still have marshmallows and some chocolate left from the last bonfire. And some crackers. We can make s'mores."

Nico looked at him like he was damn crazy, which he probably was to him. Then he closed his eyes and curled up, dragging the parka down to make sort of a tent. Too exhausted to argue--Jason knew he hadn't been getting enough sleep lately, though Hypno cabin made sure Nico wasn't going to have nightmares. It was hard enchanting that black obsidian building called Cabin Thirteen, but one of the braver kids of the Hecate cabin had decided to take the challenge and only blew up one bottle of Greek fire. When Jason had walked past it, he had seen the purplish glow of that blessing still. Which meant it likely wasn't a nightmare...

"A flashback?" he asked softly.

The boy stirred, as though he had been wakened. Jason regretted it instantly, but Nico squinting at him wasn't a sign of aggression. His voice was heavy with loss of sleep and exhaustion. "Something like that."

Jason leaned back, bracing himself on his hands. It had been six months since Gaea's defeat. A little longer since Nico di Angelo braved Tartarus. A mental wound was far more grievous than a flesh wound, he knew that. It hadn't been quite enough time to heal. He was at least glad they had managed to convince Nico to stay in camp for a little longer.

But he wouldn't talk about his problems, what he had seen down in Tartarus. Nobody blamed him for it, really. Couldn't. Not after what he had done for them, how much he had sacrificed alongside them.

"Hey, Nico..."

No response this time. He was already asleep. Sitting up, even. Jason remembered how he had looked when they found him with the giants who had captured him and put him in a jar, and couldn't draw many differences. The son of Jupiter frowned. Unbidden, his hand reached out, laid itself on Nico's head--above the parka, and the material was fluffy enough he wasn't going to wake the kid. He finished what he was about to say.

"You'll be okay." _We'll be here. I'll be here._

 **7\. Perceptive  
** _observant_

"She doesn't think you are an idiot."

Percy startled from his half-asleep state. He looked to the speaker, and found the dark-haired, pale-skinned boy leaning against the side of Poseidon cabin. He had ditched his aviator jacket some time in the past few months, when exactly Percy did not know, but now he wore a knee-length parka. Black in color, undecorative, but it made him look bigger than he really was. More...protected, maybe. Percy blinked at him, and Nico smirked.

"Then again," he said, "maybe Annabeth's got a point about you being clueless."

"Yeah, I'm feeling the love." Percy turned away from the son of Hades and looked across the camp. He had known it since there were only twelve cabins. Now there were more, and the children milled about, lively and not afraid. He hoped they would never genuinely fear that it would disappear, like he did. And, of course, his gaze eventually shifted to a certain blond-haired girl in the distance, watching as she stood with one hand on her hip and lecturing a pair of sheepish Hermes children about trying to fly a pegasus into the Nemesis cabin, of all things.  _That_ talk was more for their own good than anything else, really. "I guess she does have a point, huh."

The silence sounded like an agreement.

Then something bounced off his head. Percy whipped around towards Nico again, this time in a glare, but the son of Hades was gone. He looked around and found the object that had hit his head. It was a box, velvet and gray, and when he opened it there was a golden band inside with a single diamond set into the metal. Simple, yet unmistakable for what it was. And there was a note, tucked in there, written in a crawl he had not seen very often.

_You can't date a girl for five years and not ask to marry her. Even Kronos knew that._

**8\. Stanza  
** _section of a poem_

There was no TV comedy so great as hearing Jason try to compose poetry in bed.

The objective word, of course, being "try."

"Careful. You'll hurt yourself," Jason said, sounding torn between offense and amusement. Nico would have come up with some sort of nice retort/insult of his poetry skills if he hadn't been hiding his face under the blanket, shaking in mirth. Not that he was sure why he even tried to hide it anymore. The bed was more or less shaking along with him. Still. Token effort should be made, because bad poems aside, Jason was a perfectly servicable partner in other...recreational activities.

Eventually Nico gain enough self-control to roll over and keep a straight face when staring at Jason. Him being sexy did help quite a bit. "I'm not saying it's not good. Just...keep the dildo out of it next time? Even the girls who died single in the Underworld won't fall for that."

"Okay. Fine." Then Jason rolled over, trapped Nico under him somehow, and buried his face in his hair. "But I'm not wooing any girl from the Underworld. Correct?"

"I suppose I can overlook  _one_ fatal flaw."

Nico felt the smile without seeing it. "I'll make it up to you."

(And he did.)

 **9\. Misanthrope  
** _hater of the rest of humankind_

It would not be right to  _not_ fear Nico di Angelo.

The terror he inspired was rarely outright terror, but rather like the intimidation and the--as Leo so eloquently put--"oh shit" moment when the little chick you had been pushing around unfurled its wings and became a dragon. Other times, it was because he lashed out randomly, his emotions so strong they made him into some little madman who was too embittered and too alone, too familiar with loss to fully reconcile with the world, least of all with the inhabitants of it. Nico craved and shunned attachment, affection, in a way that filled Jason with pity. But it was not, and he recognized this after a time, the sort that allowed for empathy or sympathy. Jason had never  _not_ belonged. People looked up to him in a crowd, liked him more or less instantly, or would grow to like him. He was a natural leader and a natural light for others. It made Nico, the shadow, all the darker.

It ate at his mind, made him restless and uneasy. Piper noticed. She laid her hand on his arm some days when he was too quiet, staring into the sunset, and said knowingly, "Go talk to him."

But it would do no good. They all knew that. Nico wasn't one of Leo's automatons. He couldn't just be  _fixed_. Moreover, he didn't  _want_ to be fixed. He wandered between the two camps and the rest of the world, never belonging to any one place. Some said, after Gaea's War, that he was looking for the reincarnation of his sister, Bianca. But Jason knew that if, or when, Nico found her, he would only have stabbed himself with another knife. Because it would not be the same person. Nobody who went through the River Lethe was the same person. She would be the same soul and she would never be the same sister he had lost.

Nothing ever went Nico's way. Nothing ever went Nico's way that would make him happy. Jason did not want him to actually believe that and stop thinking there was never going to be a situation where he was going to win. A tormented child Nico might be now; who knows what that darkness would warp and turn into if left to fester?

As for the rest, he merely feared that it was too late.

 **10\. Protean  
** _changeable_

"Hey, Nico?"

Jason half expected him to ignore him. But he didn't. Instead he turned and looked back, though it was in that sort of exasperate 'Zeus, what do you want  _now_?' way. Nonetheless, the son of Jupiter found himself smiling. He walked towards the boy, his practiced spear laid across his shoulders. Nico put his hands into his pockets--of his black parka, a gift from Jason which he had actually kept. The expression loosened somewhat, became a bit awkward, as the distance between them closed.

"You shouldn't head out yet," he said, jerking his head at the sky. It was becoming gray and stormy. Jupiter (or Zeus) was in one mood or another again. Jason heard rumors there was going to be another Zeus-baby born somewhere, which made him both slightly dread the news and secretly look forward to it. He didn't see Thalia much, and sometimes it got a little lonely. "Don't want to get caught in my dad's mood, do you?"

"Zeus doesn't like the Underworld," Nico replied, his tone making it clear that Jason was being stupid and not very sneaky.

Jason shrugged. Either he didn't care--which he didn't--or he expected it to fail, which he kind of did. "We're going to have a feast today. You shouldn't leave without eating anything. Even if--" he added quickly when Nico opened his mouth, "--Octavian's going to have a speaking part."

Nico frowned. He seemed to reconsider. The thought of food had begun to tempt him once again, which was as awesome of an improvement for the skeleton they dragged onto the  _Argo II_ as Jason and everyone who knew him could have hoped for. Especially Hazel. Ah, now there's another card.

"Are you going to  _forbid_ me from leaving?" Nico said eventually, and there was a sudden twitch to the corner of his lips. A slight tease. A challenge.

Jason decided to take it. "Sure. As Praetor of the First Legion, I forbid Nico di Angelo from leaving Camp Jupiter without at least trying out the smoked ham and say an actual goodbye to Hazel Levesque." He stepped forward, wrapped an arm around Nico's shoulders and escorted him back to the campsite.

He also generously ignored it when Nico eventually stopped being the imitation of a wooden board and relaxed, leaning his head against Jason's shoulder. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I decided to give myself some breathing room and do 5 words per chapter because I write long. Too long.

**1\. Arable  
** _can be cultivated_

Nico di Angelo liked New Rome well enough, by all standards. It wasn’t home, but it was a massive “safehouse” and the guests’ lodgings were actually quite comfortable. Bonus if Jason Grace was there, and he always seemed to have a way of showing up when Nico was around. Or just…come running, which left him—Nico, that is—stuck somewhere between pleasantly bewildered and floundering mortification. He wasn’t used to that sort of positive attention (yet, Jason seemed to wordlessly promise him.)

New Rome was nice. New Rome was usually where Nico went when he needed either some nectar or maaaaaaybe some friendly company, be it Hazel…or Jason. But if there was a fatal flaw Nico had, beyond the tendency to hold grudges far past their due dates, then it was piss poor timing.

“Who decided to go agricultural,” the boy mumbled darkly under his breath as he sat on a rock and directed his zombie minions around, clearing the dirt and rubble in an attempt to make some farmland, “in the middle of summer?”

Jason, leaning on his shovel with his shirt off and his Roman six-packs showing off to all those who deigned to look at him, smiled wryly. “Hannah Washington’s convincing,” he said, referring to the daughter of Ceres who was new but had quickly distinguished herself as a powerful public speaker and a total hippie. “She had this ‘grow your own products’ campaign that’s actually going well. Fed off the patriotic spirit excellently; the Greeks have a strawberry farm. Why shouldn’t we?”

Nico glanced at him. Then he looked pointedly at the half-done farmlands before him. People didn’t like working alongside animated dead bodies, apparently, so there was only one sort of undead laborers tilling the earth right now. A distinct lack of Camp Jupiter residents—those skeletons weren’t even Roman. They were from Sparta.

And Jason, of course. No use leaving Nico to grumble alone.

The unspoken complain earned a laugh from Jason. He reached over, swung a sweaty arm around Nico’s slim shoulders and pulled him nearly off-balance. Lips pressed against his temple, and Nico could barely hear Jason’s next words as blood roared in his ears and his pulse jumped to twice its normal rhythm.

“Why don’t you come over for some Italian food later? There’s this restaurant—”

“Yes!” Nico snapped, trying to squirm away because Hades but he was _not_ used to this. Jason let him go, and he tried to get a steady hold on both his seat and his composure. “Yes. Okay. Italian food for later, whatever—can we _not_ do that in public?!”

His glare was searing, but Jason laughed again, neither intimidated nor guilty. “Then don’t be grumpy in public. C’mon, finish that up—then we can go.”

The Praetor picked up his shovel and returned to work. Nico snorted, but the zombies suddenly picked up their pace considerably.

**2\. Circumvent  
** _avoid_

Nobody aside from the two main participants knew this, but Nico di Angelo and Aphrodite had always had a slightly rocky relationship. …Well, scratch that. It wasn’t even a relationship, but more like a strange sort of circle dance slash two wary hyenas circling one another, trying to find the perfect chance to pounce and make the kill. Nico, after all, was a loner. An exile. With everything stacked against him, he was the least candidate for romance in all of the people he knew and considered friends. And Aphrodite had managed to play hookup for _all_ of them saved for him. So she considered him a pet project—and occasionally a thorn in her side.

 _You’ll have to yield someday,_ she seemed to say every few months, by the amount of attractive young men and the occasional gay rights activists and the extremely nice people who weren’t picky about who they slept with showing up in Nico's sight and trying to...interact.

 _When you get Tartarus to do a mating dance,_ Nico retorted every few months, by chasing the attractive young men away with zombies and bit the occasional gay rights activists who came a little too close and did the Hades Glower at the extremely nice people who weren’t picky about who they slept with.

So far, no victory had ever been the Love Goddess’s. And Nico can _tell_ she was getting angry.

“I don’t like Aphrodite,” grumbled Hazel to Nico one day as the two sat under a tree inside a New Rome park, each with a vanilla smoothie. She turned and gave him an envious look. “How come she doesn’t ever bother _you_? Do you have some secret love-goddess-be-gone spray can you aren’t sharing?”

He knew she was teasing him, maybe even prodding at him to perhaps, you know, get out and _live_ more. Not that he wasn’t actually alive. He just liked the dead people better. As a child of Hades, he can tell them to shut up whenever he wanted to. Live people were harder to reign in.

“Zombies,” Nico said cryptically. Then he smirked. “And willpower, I suppose.” He raised an eyebrow at the sky, as though in a challenge.

Up on Olympus, Aphrodite’s eye twitched.

Then her eyes landed on the most powerful piece on her board—Jason Grace.

**3\. Safeguard  
** _protect_

“You still have it?” Jason sounded shocked, which Nico wasn’t sure was a good thing or not. He struggled to not immediately go into defensive mode; Hazel had been most kind to point out that that wasn’t a healthy way to react, and at fourteen he considered himself old enough to attempt to _not_ be too much like Hades. There was parental love, and there was parental admiration, and there was not being so stupid as to model yourself after your asshole parent. Even if he was a god.

“Have what?” Nico retorted, and for the most part it was an honest question. He looked down at himself, wondering what exactly Jason was referring to. There hadn’t be many changes to him—still overlong hair, because last time he tried to cut it he’d nearly shorn his ear off, ripped black jeans ( _not_ because of style, mind, but because a hellhound chewed on them once) and sneakers. The sneakers were the most unusual part, for the moment: loud, neon green ones that Nico was hoping to ditch as soon as possible. He lost his last pair to hydra acid. And of course, there was the black parka he had taken to wearing as of late, but what…

Oh.

“The coat?” Nico asked, and felt some uneasiness rise like bile in his throat when Jason nodded. “…Do you want it back?”

Pale eyebrows, which had just started to relax, shot up again. “No, man. If you want, it’s all yours. But just…it’s way big.” 

And it was. Whatever that parka was, it was definitely _not_ made for Nico. His old clothes had already hung off his thin frame, but the coat more or less swallowed him whole. The sleeves came down to his knuckles if they hadn’t been pinned back by safety pins to free up his hands so Nico can raise the dead and flip the bird more efficiently. The hem came down to his knees. The shoulder stitches sagged, the pockets were hard to reach when Nico wanted to thrust his hands into them. This had created not as much frustration as people would have _thought_ it would—he tended to flail around when he talked. Leo liked to bust out the Italian stereotypes, but it was true. Once Nico got going, he’d smacked enough people in the nose that his friends had taken care to duck.

Still. That wasn’t a Nico-coat. The aviator’s jacket sort of got torn to shreds by another hellhound, though, and he hadn’t gotten the chance to get a replacement. The last time he’d attempted a shoplift, he’d been chased off by _empousai._

But he wore it. Partly because he hated feeling exposed and hated long-sleeved shirts. Mostly because it was Jason’s. Jason, who Nico had begun to feel the faint seeds of admiration—not much different from what he had felt towards Percy Jackson, long before. But Jason hadn’t let him down yet, Jason hadn’t pulled the rugs out from under him with broken promises, Jason who had known the truth, all of the truth, and hadn’t questioned or abhorred a scrawny kid with Problems because of them.

Jason, with whom and by whose side Nico had felt safe.

So he shrugged and said, “Convenience.”

Jason tilted his head, accepted the answer—as he had learned to, with Nico—and graciously let it go.

**4\. Sanction  
** _give approval to_

“No,” Hades said, his voice like titanium.

Jason felt dread bite at his stomach like an extra-hungry hellhound. Nico gave him a quick, panicky, angry look that hypocritically said _Don’t panic!_ Then he turned back to his father. “But, Father…”

“I said no,” repeated Hades. His tone brooked no argument. “It is one thing for one of my children to be involved—” here he shot a glare at Jason that was probably designed to freeze his marrows, “—with a child of _Zeus_ , but it is quite another matter to trust you with that sort of _maggot_ for any fixed length of time after what he did, let alone…”

“Father!” Nico exclaimed, exasperated. His voice echoed a little too well around the throne room and he winced. He winced again when Hades turned his eyes to him. But, impressing Jason, he took a deep breath and pulled himself together. He countered Hades’s steel with some of his own. “It was _one time_ , Father. Things like this…uh, it's not abnormal in the upper world these days. It is _normal_. And it was my mistake. I wasn’t—”

“Neither of us were thinking,” Jason added quickly, just in case Nico was attracting _too_ much attention. Getting out of here alive and without being tortured or being dead was really awesome, but getting out of here with his boyfriend also neither grounded permanently or dead ranked a little higher. It was awkward to bow in a straightjacket, but Jason managed some graceful resemblance of it. “I am deeply regretful to have moved so hastily on your son, my lord.”

Hades took an agonizingly long time to consider this. Then he bent down and glared at them with his narrowed, dark, fearsome eyes. Also oversized eyes, because he was still ten feet tall with an extra twenty of temperament. “It will not happen again,” he addressed Jason, voice dangerous. “You will not lay a finger on my son, and you _will not engage in such behavior again._ ”

Jason and Nico exchanged a glance.

_That’s impossible._

_Well, it’s your dad. This is probably the best we can do._

_…Fine._ But the way Nico’s eyes glinted said clearly: _For now._

As a sign of defiance, he latched onto Jason’s neck with his arm in a not-so-subtle way and shadow-traveled them to upstate New York. The last Jason saw of Hades was that glare that had surely burned many heroes to ashes, and he knew with some dreadful certainty that the main reason he was allowed to walk away only terrified out of his mind was because he had the god’s son by his side.

“ _Pezzo di merda,_ ” Nico muttered when they reappeared in the shadow of a donut shop. Jason, actually clothed now in old jeans and an orange Camp Half-Blood t-shirt that had been brought down so graciously by the same one who had gone to argue for his one-night stand incident, automatically wound an arm around Nico’s shoulders to keep him from staggering. He insisted otherwise, but Jason didn’t think he’d recovered that well from first Tartarus and then having to shadow-travel the Athena Parthenos across the ocean.

The ground shook a little beneath them, as though in warning. Nico shot off another curse in Italian and dragged himself away, collapsing onto a bench nearby. He leaned his head back and glared groggily at the foggy sky above. It was about to storm, Jason thought as he sank down next to Nico. He was careful not to touch him, and made sure to keep a layer of air between himself and the ground in case Hades took offense anyway.

“That was messy,” Nico said eventually, rubbing his face. He glanced at Jason then, grudgingly sheepish. “I’m sorry about that. I wasn’t…thinking.”

“It’s fine,” Jason reassured him quickly. There was, of course, the temporary house arrest placed on the both of them. Going behind parents’ backs were a lot more complicated when your parent was a god, so they would have to work that out with Hades, somehow. But right then Jason was hungry and didn’t want to think about the Underworld and Nico’s craptastic dad any more than he needed to. He glanced at the store nearby instead. “Do you want donuts?”

Nico made a face. “That shop’s donuts is gross. Tastes like some unholy mixture between cotton balls and rubber.”

“I’ll buy some. We need to throw something at Leo’s head anyway.”

That earned him a thin smile. Jason left to go buy some of the gross rubbery donuts while Nico sat there to doze off or plot.

**5\. Catharsis  
** _purging of pent-up emotions_

If it had been anyone else who’d asked the question, Nico would have let it go. But because it was Valdez who sidled up to him and _purred_ it with waggling eyebrows, he felt obliged to summon Babe Ruth from his grave and ask him to swing a home run at his nose.

“What did he do?” Jason asked in a half-scolding, half-tired way some time later when Nico’s coat had stopped smoking and Leo’s nose had stopped bleeding. On Piper’s suggestion, he had separated the two of them, with one in the sickbay (Leo, being tended to by Piper herself and some pretty nymph who cooed at him) and the other in Jason’s own cabin. Nico sat next to him now with a second degree burn that took up most of his left forearm, wincing anytime Jason applied pressure on it. It had been an accident, both of them knew that. Leo would never intentionally burn any of his friends. But still. It hurt.

There was a moment of silence when Nico gritted his teeth and waited for Jason to finish applying the gauze. Then he hissed, “What would _you_ have done if someone sashayed up to you and ask what you do to relieve stress?”

Jason frowned for a moment, not getting the question.

Then he put Leo into perspective and suddenly it made sense.

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.” Nico kicked off his sneakers. He needed to get new ones; these had holes in them by this point. Too much running and wading through acid spit. His face was tinted red, both from blisters and from indignant anger. Sometimes Jason forgot Nico was still kind of touchy about privacy; he’d loosened up enough around them that it was no longer such a big issue. But still. Certain things set him off, and Nico tended to be unorthodox when he needed to defend himself.

Jason let him snatch back his arm and let him seethe a little before brushing a lock of dark hair away from the pale face. Nico flinched, but he relaxed after a moment or two.

“Are you _really_ that bothered?” Jason mused, running his hand through the dark strands and, again, reveling how _soft_ it actually was against the rough skin of his palm. What did Nico even use? Special oil and shampoo and conditioner, made to have the smell of corpses from the Underworld? Did they even have beauty shops down there and suddenly the image of grumpy Nico trying to be all conspicuous visiting one of them made Jason snort.

“What?” Present-time Nico was offended. He shrugged off the caress and tried to climb off the bed, miffed, but Jason was quicker. He wrapped both arms around him, one at the shoulders and one at the waist, and kept him still. The squirming that came with it felt like a token gesture. “Hey, let go of me. Son of a—You aren’t Mrs. O’Leary!”

“I am not going to _lick_ you,” Jason reminded him, amused despite himself. He dragged Nico towards him until the struggling stopped and the son of Hades merely huffed, indignant. He tucked the dark head under his chin and glanced at the fireplace that had been installed at the end of the spacious but empty Zeus Cabin, watching the firewood crackle. “…Unless, of course, you want to.”

“Gross. I don’t want BBQ ribs-flavored slobber all over my neck.”

Jason grinned. “Fine.” He kissed the top of Nico’s head. “Are you staying the night, at least?"

A pause—Jason sensed reluctance, and felt regret whip up within his own stomach. Things had been tense in the Underworld lately, as far as he could tell. Something was happening. Shadow-traveling had suddenly been destabilized, and Nico was on the verge of asking camp to send a quest of heroes to solve the problem with him. But he hadn’t _wanted_ to, was the thing. The son of Hades had laid a sort of jealous, protective claim over his father’s realm, and he was unwilling to ask for any sort of help in taking care of it.

Responsibility and some form of reassurance, that he was _needed_ for something. Jason wasn’t sure he could completely sympathize with that—as a rule, Jason needed people to need him less, not more—but he could, to a degree, understand. And trust that if there _was_ a problem that required heroes to bear arms once more, Nico would talk to him about it.

“I’ll stay,” Nico decided suddenly, voice quiet. Jason was jolted back to reality by his words, and he blinked once or twice before replying—with a grin (that Nico couldn’t see.) “Just for a few hours,” the son of Hades added sharply, more for his own benefit than Jason’s. It was some attempt at discipline that half of the camp would know was doomed to fail. The son of Hades did not walk into the Zeus cabin and _not_ stay until morning unless there was a fire. 

Jason elected to not remind him of that. “Sounds good,” he said instead, grinning, and crashed them both onto his comfortable bunk.

The next morning Jason woke up hugging a zombie and a note tacked to its forehead in Nico’s handwriting saying, simply, _Fuck you. You made me late again._

**Author's Note:**

> Where did Piper go in those scenes where there's totally evidences of slash?!
> 
> I put her in time-out and let her sulk while I satisfy my--and perhaps your--inner fangirl.


End file.
